Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are attracting significant attention because of their properties to enable superior electronic components and sensors. By exploiting nanoscale effects, NEMS present interesting and unique characteristics. For instance, NEMS-based devices can have an extremely high fundamental frequency as described by Y. T. Yang, K. L. Ekinci, X. M. H. Huang, L. M. Schiavone, M. L. Roukes, C. A. Zorman, and M. Mehregany, Appl. Phys. Lett. 78, 162 (2001); by A. N. Cleland and M. L. Roukes, Appl. Phys. Lett. 69, 2653 (1996); by A. Erbe, R. H. Blick, A. Tilke, A. Kriele, and P. Kotthaus, Appl. Phys. Lett. 73, 3751 (1998); and by X. M. H Huang, C. A. Zorman, M. Mehregany, and M. L. Roukes, Nature (London) 421, 496 (2003) and preserve very high mechanical responsivity as described by M. L. Rhodes, “Nanoelectromechanical system,”, Technical Digest of the 2000 Solid-State Sensor and Actuator Workshop, 2000.
Several NEMS devices have been reported, such as mass sensors described by G. Abadal, Z. J. Davis, B. Helbo, X. Borrise, R. Ruiz, A. Boisen, F. Campabadal, J. Esteve, E. Figueras, F. Perez-Murano, and N. Bamiol, Nanotechnology 12, 100 (2001); RF resonators described in the same article, field-effect transistors described by R. Martel, T. Schmidt, H. R. Shea, T. Hertel, and Ph. Avouris, Appl. Phys. Lett. 73, 2447 (1998); and electrometers described by A. N. Cleland and M. L. Roukes, Nature (London) 392, 160 (1998).
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have long been considered ideal building blocks for NEMS devices due to their superior electrical and mechanical properties. CNT-based NEMS devices such as nanotweezers have been reported by S. Akita, Y. Nakayama, S. Mizooka, Y. Takano, T. Okawa, Y. Miyatake, S. Yamanaka, M. Tsuji, and T. Nosaka, Appl. Phys. Lett. 79, 1691 (2001) and by P. Kim and C. M. Lieber, Science 126, 2148 (1999); nonvolatile random access memory elements reported by T. Rueckes, K. Kim, E. Joslevich, G. Y. Tseng, C. Cheung, and C. M. Lieber, Science 289, 94 (2000); nanorelays reported by J. Kinaret, T. Nord, and S. Viefers, Appl. Phys. Lett. 82, 1287 (2002); and rotational actuators reported by A. M. Fennimore, T. D. Yuzvlnsky, W. Q. Han, M. S. Fuhrer, J. Cummings, and A. Zettl, Nature (London) 424, 408 (2003).